North Lanarkshire Update

The trade unions in North Lanarkshire have finally broken their silence over the Council's late-running job evaluation (JE) review with this statement from Unison (complete with spelling mistake) which was sent to me by a kind reader.

JOB RE-EVALATION (sic) PROJECT UPDATE

The process of re-evaluating the posts involved in the equal pay litigation is almost complete. There are a small number of outstanding issues that the job evaluation team will be able to conclude in the next few days. The new job overviews will then be passed to the project board which is made up equally of management and trade union representatives. The project board is then responsible for implementing any changes that arise from the new evaluations. UNISON are pushing for the process to be concluded without further delay and we'll update members when we can.

Now anyone can make a silly spelling mistake, but what I find very odd is that the union has nothing to say about senior Home Care managers blatantly interfering in the review exercise, as I reported on the blog recently.

I would have thought this was a perfect opportunity to send a strong message to union members that this kind of meddling is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated, instead of just turning blind eye to what's been going on recently.  

What I did find interesting is that the Project Board is made up of equal numbers of management and trade union representatives since  this means the Council cannot impose its will - the unions have to agree.

If the new job overviews are all completed, then surely they should be published and shared so that the NLC workforce can understand what progress has been made and what issues remain to be decided by the Project Board.

And while I'm on the subject of sharing information, why not publish the names of the various reps on the Project Board?

Surely the workforces entitled to know who is making these big decisions.